On the Question of Quality Versus Quantity

 

   

I. 

 

Good people always insist: It's quality rather than quantity that matters [1].

 

You'll be a much happier and more authentic human being, they say, if you forget about numbers, stop being acquisitive, and focus instead on things that have real value and substance, such as meaningful relationships.

 

It's a kind of moral minimalism in which the related mantra less is more is used to justify a small circle of friends, or the fact that one hasn't read many books. 

 

Surprisingly, even D. H. Lawrence, who is usually quick to attack the base-born stupidity of proverbial wisdom, buys into this idea. But whilst he may be right to argue that it is better to read one good book six times rather than six bad books once [2], we feel obliged to point out the possibility of reading six good books six times.

 

That's a greater quantity of books - and many more readings - but surely that's better than simply reading one text over and over and insisting with monomaniacal intensity on its value. For that's precisely the error religiously-minded people fall into when they mistakenly decide that all they ever need read is a single holy text. 

 

Ultimately, it's not a binary choice: you can have quality and quantity. In fact, as we'll explain below, you can't have the former without the latter ...

  

II. 

 

Speaking as an evolutionary biologist, I can say that nature massively favours quantity over quality, which is why it can be so outrageously profligate. It's not necessarily the fittest who survive in this life, it's those who have the numbers to stake a claim on the future. 

 

And by modelling populations over long timescales, a recent Oxford study showed that the most important determinant of evolutionary success was not good genes, but the widest number of genetically available mutations [3].   

 

Brilliant individuals come and go like flowers; they simply don't have time to fix in the population or determine the evolutionary outcome of a race.   

And speaking as an artist, I can also confirm the fact that the creation of great works rests upon a large body of work. That's why, for example, it was necessary for Picasso to paint some 60,000 pictures in order to produce a small number of works - probably fewer than a 100 - that are considered masterpieces. 

 

This doesn't mean the vast bulk of the work is worthless or a waste of time; on the contrary, it was vital. For it was by producing works in such quantity that Picasso was able to learn, experiment, and evolve as an artist. Most importantly, it allowed him to make mistakes; for just as quality rests upon quantity, success rests upon repeated failure.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The saying is often attributed to the Roman philosopher (and proto-Christian) Seneca; see his Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter XLV: 'On sophistical argumentation', line 1. Click here to read online.    

 

[2] See Lawrence's discussion of books and reading in relation to this question of quality (or real value) versus quantity in Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 60.  

 

[3] The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE and was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. It's lead author is Dr Ard Louis, Reader in Theoretical Physics at Oxford University. For an interview with the latter discussing the key finding of the study - i.e., that  life's evolution is all about arrival of the frequent, rather than survival of the fittest - click here.

 

 

Notes on the False Black Widow (In Praise of Spiders)

A female false widow spider 

(SA/2022)

 

 

I'm not an arachnologist, but I think that the creature pictured above that I discovered hiding in the bottom of a garden waste sack, is commonly known as a cupboard spider or, more intriguingly, a false widow spider, due to a superficial resemblance to its more venomous and darker cousin. 

 

Like black widows, the female cupboard spider is usually around a centimetre in length and has a round, bulbous abdomen that is typically reddish-bown in colour (like a conker), with distinctive markings. 

 

Providing they have access to water, they can go several months without feeding and live up to six years, laying three or more egg sacs annually, each containing between 40-100 eggs from which tiny but fully independent spiderlings will usually emerge within a month. 

 

A cosmopolitan spider, i.e., one found in many parts of the world, the species known as Steatoda nobilis is thought to have  arrived in the UK relatively recently; as a stowaway on ships transporting bananas from tropical lands. 

 

Now, however, thanks to a warming climate, numbers are booming and reports of people being bitten by these spiders - painful, but not deadly and with no long-lasting effects - are often found in the newspapers, written in predictably sensational style: 

 

Traumatised mum warns other parents to be alert after her baby was bitten multiple times by an invasive arachnid 250 times more poisonous than native species... 

 

Such reports often fail to note that the spiders are not aggressive and generally don't bite people unless provoked to react in a defensive manner. 

 

So, my advice is, should you come across such a lovely spider, leave it alone and learn to live in wonder, like a philosopher, rather than in fear or contempt for these marvels of evolution which have been around for hundreds of millions of years before us and will probably still be spinning webs long after humanity has vanished from the face of the earth.       

   

Two legs good, eight legs better ... 

In the News ... Flu Infected Macaques and Land-Loving Sharks

As the ancient proverb says: 

Never let a monkey sneeze in your face, or a shark walk up behind you ...

 

I. 

 

Steven Salzberg published a very interesting piece in the American business magazine Forbes earlier this month [1], detailing how scientists in the United States and Canada involved in so-called gain-of-function research [2] have recreated the deadly 1918 flu virus (commonly known as Spanish flu). 

 

Yes, you read that correctly; scientists have genetically recreated (and enhanced) an extinct flu virus [3]; one that killed tens of millions of people around the world in what was the second deadliest pandemic in human history (topped only by the Black Death in the mid-14th century). And they are now busy infecting captive monkeys with it ...! 

 

I would have thought that was quite a controversial thing to do and would have therefore made for a big news story. But it's barely been reported in the mainstream media - despite all their hysteria over Covid-19 (and all we've learnt over the past few years about the very real risk of lab leaks).         

 

 

II.

 

A story which did get quite a lot of media coverage, however, was one concerning a small species of longtailed, slender-bodied carpet shark, that is found in shallow, tropical waters off Australia and New Guinea [4]. 

 

Known as the epaulette shark,  it has evolved to cope with the severe oxygen depletion in isolated tidal pools by increasing the blood supply to its brain and selectively shutting down non-essential functions. It can pretty much go without oxygen for up to two hours, without suffering any ill effects. 

 

Even more amazingly, epaulette sharks are also able to "walk" on dry land - again for a considerable period of time and covering a distance of up to 30 metres - by wriggling their bodies and pushing with their paddle-shaped fins. Researchers think this will radically improve their chances of survival in an increasingly challenging environment. 

 

For whereas their competitors for food and better oxygenated water can only rely on their swimming abilities - and must stay submerged in order to breathe - these little sharks can happily stroll from tidepool to tidepool.    

 

I love stories like this: for one thing, they present a serious challenge to creationists who deny evolution by natural selection; and, secondly, they also challenge the green doom-mongering of eco-fanatics who insist global warming will spell the end of life on earth: it won't. 

 

Indeed, it could even be that, one day, in a far-off future, any remaining human beings not killed by ALZ-113 in the catastrophic Simian Flu Pandemic [5], will be hunted as prey not just by gorillas on horseback, but land-loving sharks able not merely to walk but run.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Steven Salzburg, 'Scientists Have Re-Created The Deadly 1918 Flu Virus. Why?', Forbes (Aug 15, 2022): click here to read the article online.

 

[2] Gain-of-function research is the genetic enhancement of an organism such as a virus, in order to increase its transmissibility, for example, it's host range, or its deadliness. It's a form of research that therefore excites the interest of medical professionals hoping to better predict the behaviour of infectious diseases and better able to develop vaccines, and military chiefs concerned about (or keen to experiment with) bioweapons. Whilst not all GoF research is inherently dangerous, work on certain pathogens does have extremely worrying biosafety and biosecurity risks; that's why the United States, for example, is thought to outsource much of this work to labs in China (such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology).  

 

[3] As Salzburg is at pains to point out: "The 1918 flu disappeared from the natural world long ago - or to be more precise, it evolved into a much, much milder form of influenza. The deadly form that was recently re-created in several labs does not exist in nature today." 

      The threat that it now poses is entirely due to the work carried out by scientists over the last twenty years or so, based upon the original research of a team led by Jeffery Taubenberger and Ann Reid, who, having recovered pieces of the 1918 flu virus from human samples that had been frozen for nearly a century, figured out how to sequence the genome. 

 

[4] See Richard Luscombe's article in The Guardian, for example; 'Epaulette sharks able to walk on land evolving to better survive climate crisis', (23 August, 2022): click here to read online. 

[5] I'm referring here, of course, to the fictional flu pandemic which resulted in the near extinction of humanity in the American sci-fi movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes (dir. by Rupert Wyatt, 2011).  

All Change: Notes on Chapter 5 of Metamorphoses by Emanuele Coccia

 

Throughout this post, and at this very moment, 

I am thinking in you ...

 

 

I. 

 

Although Emanuele Coccia thinks every living being is already biodiverse, he favours extending this inner diversity outwards and amplifying the metamorphic force that animates us. He also supports creating spaces of metamorphic conspiracy, so that forms can combine and become-other, etc. 

 

And I'm with him in this, although I'd sooner slit my wrists than speak of imparting "a more intense and richer life" [a] to Gaia. The more animals and plants there are, the better as far as I'm concerned.

In fact, I wouldn't even object to large predators prowling the streets and gobbling up a few fat children; for what is this ultimately but an exchange of solar energy; "every act of feeding is nothing other than a secret and invisible exchange of extra-terrestrial light" [149].

 

Tyger tyger, burning bright / In the cities of the night ... [b]

 

 

II.

 

Coccia's argument in this fifth and final chapter is, simply, we need one another. That is to say, all beings - be they plant, animal, or human - fundamentally rely on (and live off the lives of) other beings in an interspecies community. Interdependence is the name of the game and this interdependence is, for Coccia, primarily "of a cognitive and speculative order" [157]. 

 

Intellect - or mind - is not a property of the individual; it's a relation between species. Thus, the intelligence of the wolf, for example, has developed due to (and within) the relationship large predators have with those animals they prey upon. And in some cases, the intellect of one species is actually embodied in another:

 

"With the flower, the plant [...] entrusts another species belonging to another kingdom with the task of making a decision on the genetic and biological destiny of its own species. It entrusts them with the task of directing the metamorphosis of its species. In a certain sense, the flower transfers the plant's species-mind into the body of the bee." [158]

 

Coccia continues: 

 

"It is not simply a collaboration, it is the constitution of a cognitive and speculative interspecific organ. This means not only that all evolutionary development is co-evolution [...] but also that [...] co-evolution is what we normally call agriculture or husbandry. Each species decides, in its own way, the evolutionary fate of others. What we call evolution is nothing more than a kind of generalized interspecies agriculture, a cosmic crossbreeding - which is not necessarily designed for the benefit of one or the other. The world as a whole thus becomes a kind of purely relational reality [...]" [158]         

 

As a reader of Lawrence, one would be tempted to call this a democracy of touch ... [c]

 

 

III.

For Coccia, the form taken by each species is neither a destiny nor something that has necessarily arisen through chance or the mechanism of natural selection obliging them to adapt to their environment. 

 

For Coccia, there is a will of some kind at work:

 

"The shapes of living bodies - their colours, decorative patterns, etc. - are not only expressions of the individual's adaptation to the world around them. They are also and above all the expression of a taste, of a sort of artistic will that drives the individual of a species to prefer one form over the other." [162]

 

Darwin described this in terms of sexual selection, but I suspect Coccia has also been influenced in his thinking here by Nietzsche, who wrote of art as an organic function of the the will to power and as the "great means of making life possible, the great seduction to life, the greatest stimulant of life" [d]. 

 

And this is true in both man and animal, between whom there is no cardinal distinction. 

 

Indeed, art, says Nietzsche, is ultimately a form of animal vigour; "an excess and overflow of blooming physicality into the world of images and desires" [e]. We see this for ourselves each spring, when animals produce "new weapons, pigments, colours, and forms; above all, new movements, new rhythms, new love calls and seductions" [f]. 

 

Ultimately, for Coccia, species are "nothing more than expressions of  a 'biotic art', a sort of aesthetic performance conducted on an anatomical level" [163], and ecology should reinvent itself in terms of art rather than good housekeeping, accepting that nothing is natural and there are no areas of wilderness to conserve; that all is cultivated and artificial. 

 

Anthropologists and ethnologists long ago stopped talking about primitive peoples and noble savages. Now, ecologists and environmentalists should stop pretending there are primitive species and savage beasts, who are somehow more authentic - more natural - than us. As Coccia writes: 

 

"Everything that constitutes us derives from the non-human and has the same nature, but the reverse is also true: everything that defines humanity, beginning with error, art, artifice, and moral arbitration, also defines the totality of living species." [167]    

 

 

IV.

 

In the final section of Chapter 5, Coccia continues to make some striking claims, including for example, that evolution should be considered as "the production of [...] contemporary nature" [168]. Fortunately, he explains what he means by this:

 

"From the beginning of the twentieth century, when art established itself as avant-garde, it ceased to fulfil an aesthetic function. It freed itself from the task of producing beauty, or decorating what already exists and bringing it into harmony. In claiming to be contemporary [...] art became a collective practice of the divination of the future [...] an attempt [by society] to reproduce itself differently from what it is [...] Art embodies a society's desire for and project of metamorphosis." [168-69]     

 

Thus evolution - as Coccia understands it - is the mode of life "that corresponds to what contemporary art is for culture" [169]. He continues:

"Nature is not only the immemorial prehistory of culture, but its unrealized future; its surrealistic anticipation. Contemporary nature is the scene where life enters into the avant-garde of its future. It is life as natural avant-garde. It is the surrealistic reproduction of forms of life." [169]

Thus, cities shouldn't just become eco-friendly and sustainable, but contemporary nature galleries in which the future is reimagined and engineered: 

 

"Bringing together artists, scientists, designers, architects, and farmers, it will be a matter of building multispecies associations somewhere between city, garden, plantation, and stable, where each living being produces works for others and for themselves." [170] [g]

 

To be honest, I don't know how seriously to take this virtuous exercise of the imagination - or whether I find it appealing or appalling. 

 

It's certainly a more sophisticated proposal than my suggestion made earlier to simply release the wolves, but it's also - like all utopian fantasies of the ideal society - inherently fascistic. It's as if Coccia wishes to build a multispecies labour camp overseen by (presumably human) artists and scientists who will, as it were, attempt to take control of evolution. 

 

It seems an odd note on which to finish - one that essentially defeats the whole point and purpose (and central argument) of the book: that metamorphosis is the essential, unstoppable, and inhuman law of life; one that is unfolding all of the time and everwhere, including in our cities, without any need for human direction (as if it were even possible for man to stand outside, as it were, and control events).

 

I know that Coccia knows this: knows that the future cannot be determined, because it's "the pure force of metamorphosis" [180]; knows that life is not something that belongs to any of us, "either as individuals, as a nation, or as a species" [180] - so I don't know quite why he ends his work where and how he does. 

 

Maybe he's been hanging around with artists for too long ...   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Emanuele Coccia, Metamorphoses, trans. Robin MacKay, (Polity Press, 2021), p. 147. Future page references to this book will be given directly in the main text. 

 

[b] This is not quite Coccia's hope for cities of the future; for his far-grander and more utopian vision see pp. 169-70 of Metamorphoses (which I discuss in section IV of this post).

 

[c] I very much regret the fact that Coccia chooses to conclude his work on interspecies relationship in terms of a cosmic mind produced by "an infinite series of arbitrary and rational encounters and decisions taken by different species at different times, according to the strangest of intentions" [161]. 

      For me, what's crucial about this relationship is that the encounters are libidinal rather than rational, involving a politics of desire: "The touch of the feet on the earth, the touch of the fingers on a tree, on a creature, the touch of hands and breasts, the touch of the whole body to body, and the interpenetration of passionate love: it is life itself, and in the touch, we are all alive."

      See D. H. Lawrence, The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 323. This line is from the second version of the novel.

      I have written several posts on Lawrence's notion of a democracy of touch here on Torpedo the Ark and readers who are interested can go to labels and click on the term. 

 

[d] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, ed. Walter Kaufmann, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, (Vintage Books, 1968), note 853 (II), p. 452. 

      I would encourage readers to familiarise themselves with all of Nietzsche's notes on the will to power as art; see Book III, Part IV, notes 794-853, pp. 419-453. And for a fascinating philosophical discussion of Nietzsche's thinking on animality, art, and will to power (in relation to Darwin), see Keith Ansell-Pearson's essay, 'Nietzsche contra Darwin', in Viroid Life, (Routledge 1997), pp. 85-122.      

[e] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, note 802, p. 422. 

[f] Ibid., note 808, p. 426. 

[g] Apparently, this vision of a museum for contemporary nature is inspired by Stefano Boeri's Vertical Forest project (2007-14), in Milan. Visit Boeri's website for more information on this and on his latest work involving trees: click here. 

 

 

To read my notes on the Introduction and first chapter of Emanuele Coccia's Metamorphoses, click here. 

 

To read notes on chapter two ... click here. 

 

To read notes on chapter three ... click here. 

 

To read notes on chapter four ... click here.

Evolution Needs Death More Than It Loves Life: Reflections on Extinction Rebellion

Poster by Extinction Rebellion Art Group

rebellion.earth/act-now/resources/art-group/

What does it mean to rebel against extinction?

Ironically, it means one is opposed to the driving force of evolution; which is to say, one is anti-life understood in the immoral terms of difference and becoming.

For whether we like it or not, mass extinctions periodically destroy up to 95% of life forms in giant orgies of death and scientists think that 99.9% of all species that have ever lived have now - like the Monty Python parrot - passed on, ceased to be, joined the choir invisible. It's simply pointless protesting the fact that evolution needs death more than it loves life.          

We used to think the sun revolved around the earth. Then we discovered it wasn't so. Now there are young people who sincerely believe the earth revolves around them. The overly-privileged and self-righteous children of generation snowflake who talk about saving the planet are, ultimately, only concerned about protecting their own future.

But alas, everything isn't all about them - anymore than it's all about the polar bears or coral reef - and their will to conserve and self-preserve has become a form of mania expressed as moral and political alarmism.

Whisper it quietly, but every species is ultimately endangered and will one day topple into the abyss of non-existence. And if, as certainly seems to be the case, humanity is giving profligate Nature a helping hand by rapidly speeding up the extinction rate and destroying the environment, it might be remembered that we too are part of the biosphere and our actions just as natural as those of any other species.

In other words, there's no need to feel guilty or sinful; the so-called sixth extinction event lacks moral significance, even if we're the causal agents. Besides, as biologist R. Alexander Pyron has pointed out:

"Unless we somehow destroy every living cell on Earth, the sixth extinction will be followed by a recovery, and later a seventh extinction, and so on. [...] Within a few million years of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, the post-apocalyptic void had been filled by an explosion of diversity - modern mammals, birds and amphibians of all shapes and sizes. This is how evolution proceeds: through extinction."

Professor Pyron also reminds us that whatever effort we make to stabilise and maintain present conditions, sea-levels and temperatures will continue to rise and fall and the climate as we know it today will eventually be "overrun by the inexorable forces of space and geology".

Finally, it should be noted that even the most rebellious of extinction rebels doesn't object to the planned eradication of deadly diseases such as HIV, Ebola, and malaria, even though these are "key components of microbial biodiversity, as unique as pandas, elephants and orangutans". As indicated earlier, the campaign to save the Earth is really a campaign to save the Earth for us: Extinction Rebellion is just another exercise in anthropocentric conceit and hypocrisy.   

Thus, whilst it's true that climate change may have certain dramatic effects - such as coastal flooding and widespread famines - and whilst it makes sense to take action to mitigate these things, I refuse to be lectured by adolescent eco-warriors, bandwagon jumping celebrities, or grey-bearded old hippies with an apocalyptic worldview.

In fact, push comes to shove, I remain more sympathetic to the arguments put forward by members of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, founded by Les U. Knight in 1991. For like Rupert Birkin, I regard people as an obstruction and a hindrance to the future unfolding of evolution and believe that only our self-extinction will allow life to continue perfect and marvellous in all its inhuman splendour.


See: R. Alexander Pyron, 'We don’t need to save endangered species. Extinction is part of evolution.' The Washington Post (22 Nov 2017): click here.

And click here for my post on Voluntary Human Extinction (published 12 October 2013). 

They Came from Outer Space

One of the more amusing oh, if only it were true, stories doing the rounds this week concerns our old friend the octopus ... According to a group of researchers, octopuses are extraterrestrial biological entities; i.e. alien beings from another world and not just highly intelligent deep sea creatures. 

Of course, there's no actual evidence to support such a claim and it's not only been rejected by the wider scientific community, but mocked in the media: You've got to be squidding me! being a typical tabloid headline.   

Despite anticipating such a reaction, the authors of the paper published in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, boldy insist that the so-called Cambrian explosion - a sudden burst of life that occurred c. 540 million years ago - can only be explained as an event with cosmic origins.

Essentially, the idea is that alien viruses were transported to Earth by a meteor and infected the life that already existed here; in this case, a population of primitive squid-like organisms, causing them to mutate into an alien hybrid - commonly known as an octopus. Alternatively, some suggest that fertilised octopus eggs came ready frozen from out of space.

Either way, this is obviously a reimagining of the panspermia hypothesis which posits that life exists throughout the universe and was seeded on Earth via comets, asteroids, space dust, or shooting stars. It's an old idea - very old; even the ancient Greeks were speculating along these lines and the first known use of the term is found in the writings of the pre-Socratic philosopher Anaxagoras.

More recently, Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe have been influential proponents of the theory; indeed, the latter is one of the authors of the new paper on alien cephalopods. He and his colleagues argue that so suddenly did octopuses evolve their astonishing features (including large brains and a sophisticated nervous sytem) that it is plausible to suggest they were "borrowed from a far distant future [...] or more realistically from the cosmos at large".

Having said that, the authors concede that such an extraterrestrial explanation for the emergence of these and other unusual features does run "counter to the prevailing dominant paradigm". And, of course, there are good reasons why this is so ...

For a start, it's borderline crackpot; although they may not wear tinfoil hats, not one of the authors is a zoologist and much of the speculation rests on the claim that the genetics of the octopus is uniquely mysterious. A 2015 paper published in Nature, however, revealed that the genome of the creature in question had been fully and successfully mapped and one of the things it showed was how the octopus fits into the generally accepted theory of (terrestrial) evolution.

Thus there's simply no need to imagine an alien origin - no matter how otherworldly the octopus may be in appearance or how unnatural its abilities may seem to us.        

See: J. Steele et al, 'Cause of Cambrian Explosion - Terrestrial or Cosmic?', Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, (available online 13 March, 2018): click here. 

For an earlier post in praise of the octopus that anticipates this one, click here.

Watching the World Turn Day-Glo: Notes on Plastic Eating Bacteria

Image: Shutterstock / Wikicommons / Big Think

In the above picture we can observe Ideonella sakainesis happily feasting on a plastic bottle;

 breaking down polyethylene terephthalate into terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol - 

two delicious and yet environmentally benign substances.

Another good news story from the world of science and serendipity ...

After the discovery in 2016 of a bacterium that had naturally evolved to eat plastic at a Japanese waste dump, researchers have now (accidentally) created a mutant enzyme that accelerates the break down of polymeric materials by around 20%.  

The international team were initially attempting to determine the exact structure of the enzyme produced by the bug, which, like all enzymes, is basically a large protein molecule composed of a long chain of amino acids. For this they used an intense beam of X-rays that is 10 billion times brighter than the sun and capable of illuminating individual atoms that might otherwise withdraw into darkness.

It looked as if the structure of the enzyme was very similar to one evolved by many bacteria to digest cutin - a waxy, water-repellent substance used by plants for protection. By slightly tweaking it, however, they discovered that they had inadvertently made the enzyme even more efficient at breaking down PET (the plastic most commonly used to make soft drink bottles). 

The new and improved enzyme takes only a few days to start the process of disintegrating the plastic; if left to degrade in the oceans, in comparison, it can take hundreds or even thousands of years. What's more, researchers are hopeful that this process might be significantly speeded up still further and thus play an important part in tackling the problem of what to do with the one million plastic bottles that are sold each minute around the globe.

One way they might possibly optimise the performance of the mutant enzyme is to transplant it into extremophile bacteria that enjoy living at temperatures over 70c. At such heat, PET changes from a hard to a viscous state, making it liable to degrade between 10 and 100 times faster.

It has to be said, this new research into enzyme technology is, to me at least, incredibly exciting and must hold out promise for the future. For not only are enzymes non-toxic and biodegradable, but they can be produced in large quantities by micro-organisms.

Having said that, it still remains crucial to reduce the amount of shit we produce and throw away in the first place. But this is surely a positive development - though not as astonishing as the fact that plastic-eating bugs evolved in the first place ... 

Note: those interested in reading the published research for themselves should see Harry P. Austin et al, 'Characterization and engineering of a plastic-degrading aromatic polyesterase', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2018): click here.  

Musical bonus: to listen to the X-Ray Spex track from 1978 that inspired the title to this post (and to see the band fronted by the inimitable Poly Styrene performing on Top of the Pops), click here.

Chris D. Thomas: Inheritors of the Earth - Six Key Ideas (Part 1: Sections I - III)

I. Extinction isn't the End of the World and Change is the Only Constant

Professor Chris D. Thomas is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of York who has written a book that lends scientific support to Rupert Birkin's vision in Women in Love of a far-off future in which biological diversity is even greater than it is now and unimaginable new species of life will have unfolded. Of course, Thomas doesn't share Birkin's misanthropy and long for a world free of humanity, but he does affirm that evolution never ends and that there is thus an infinite array of lovely things still to come (after - but also out of - the Anthropocene period).

Thomas begins by setting out a familiar tale of woe concerning the negative effect that mankind is said to have had on the Earth. Whilst conceding the importance of recognising ways in which human activity threatens the existence of life, he quickly counters this doom-laden narrative of eco-apocalypse and suggests we take a broader view, considering all the evidence and not just those facts that reinforce the moral and political concerns of those who subscribe to a green philosophy based on a desire to save the planet.     

Essentially, Thomas is arguing that short-term ecological upheaval and species extinction pales into insignificance when seen from the perspective of evolution. Ultimately, no matter how great the losses, there will be winners; that is to say, species that will not only survive, but thrive; not only thrive, but diversify into an unimaginable variety of new species. Periods when the levels of extinction are high - as they are presently - obviously present setbacks; "but in the end they have provided new opportunities for enterprising creatures that have been able to exploit the new conditions" [7]. Come back in a million years, says Thomas, and you're likely to be astonished at what you'll find.  

We might not like it, but never-ending change is the only constant; the world is in a state of permanent flux. Futile attempts to conserve the world as it is - or, even more vainly, to restore it to some earlier, more pristine, more natural state - are not only untenable, but "implicitly dismiss as undesirable the continuing biological gains of the human epoch" [8]. Further, the logic of such a way of thinking can have ugly consequences, such as the call to eradicate alien arrivals and exterminate impure hybrids. Rather than "swim against the tide of ecological and evolutionary change" [9], writes Thomas, we should go with the flow and joyfully facilitate and accelerate biological processes.


II. The Future Walks Among Us

Just to be clear: Thomas isn't arguing that we shouldn't, for example, try to prevent unsustainable fishing and the dumping of plastic into the oceans. But, we need to open our eyes to the evolutionary reality of the world and acknowledge biological gains made. It can also be strangely comforting to realise that we can glimpse the future within the present; that the "inheritors of the future Earth are already among us today" [43], just as birds and mammals were coexistent with the dinosaurs for millions of years and did not "suddenly appear after the asteroid hit" [41] (an idea that greater knowledge of the fossil record plus revolutionary advances in molecular biology has shown to be false).

These inheritors, as Thomas calls them, might not be the wild and charismatic megafauna that most people worry about (tigers, gorillas, pandas, polar bears, etc.), but we should probably get over our sentimental privileging of such beasts and recognise that domestic animals and household pets - as well as cereal crops - have all been incredibly successful by taking advantage of "a gullible primate" [45] in order to ensure their survival and global proliferation.

It's a Lawrentian nightmare, but there are now about 1.5 billion cattle, 1.2 billion sheep, 1 billion pigs and an astonishing 22 billion chickens in the world, all being fed and cared for in addition to the 1 billion cats and dogs, by 7 billion human beings. In other words, "the present is not a dip in the total numbers or combined weight [biomass] of large animals ... it is a substantial increase" [47] and the Anthropocene remains "just as much an age of mammals and birds as it ever was" [47].

Thomas concludes that "it's time to stop yearning for a pristine, wild world ... [as] there is no longer any such thing as human-free nature" [53] and we cannot reverse time. Besides, many species of large non-domestic animal are recovering in number and returning to their former lands; bears, bison, wolves, deer, boar, etc. Such recoveries seem likely to become more widespread (albeit within human-managed spaces) and the chances are "there will be considerably more large wild mammals in existence one hundred years from now than there are today" [51].


III. On Accelerated Evolution

Ecological transformation is one thing; evolutionary change is something else - something, in the long run, far more fundamental. Evolution, as Thomas says, is how life on Earth responds to and recovers from natural disasters, including periods of mass extinction.

People often parrot the phrase sixth extinction and like to blame humanity for it. But perhaps we should also consider whether this will in turn trigger a new flourishing of life. Thomas certainly seems to think so. Further, he argues that new species are already "coming into existence with immodest haste, adapting to new conditions" [118] - such as the Italian sparrow.

In a crucial passage, he continues:

"Remarkable as it might seem, new plant species may be coming into existence faster today than at any time in the history of our planet. A new era has arrived in which we see an acceleration of evolutionary change and the genesis of new life-forms. Given that many of them would not exist but for humans, they challenge us to contemplate the relationship between humanity and nature." [118]

We should abandon our human (all too human) guilt about our place in the world and our influence upon it. We should abandon also our privileging of old species over new and the mad desire to save everything. Life doesn't need saving, it needs accelerating and diversifying and the rapid evolution taking place not just in plants, but in animals, fungi and microbes, is something to marvel at.

"Great replacements have frequently been at the heart of large-scale and long-term evolutionary change ..." [140] and rather than always try to conserve things and weeping over the creatures that disappear into the void, we might seek to "build new biological communities composed of compatible species so that future ecosystems are more robust than those that currently exist" [126].


See: Chris D. Thomas, Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature is Thriving in an Age of Extinction (Allen Lane, 2017). 

To read Part 2 of this post (Sections IV-VI) click here. 

On Biodiversity in the Anthropocene

The London Underground Mosquito (Culex molestus)

When you read reports about global warming, the destruction of the natural world and accelerated rates of extinction, it's easy to think that there are no winners other than ever-proliferating humanity and that even our malignant success as a species is unsustainable and will thus be relatively shortlived.

But, actually, there are other animals who are doing OK and might even be said to be thriving in this age that some term the Anthropocene ...

Mosquitos, for example, are well-adapted to life in cities; illegally dumped waste and poor sanitation means lots of stagnant water in which to breed; whilst millions of people and their pets all conveniently packed into one place means a constant supply of warm blood on which to feed.  

Other insects doing just fine thanks to human expansion and activity, include bedbugs and cockroaches. But it's not just creepy-crawlies that will enter the evolutionary future alongside man. Larger animals also find shelter, warmth and plentiful food in urban environments. It has been pointed out that if a rat was to design its own ideal home, it would pretty much resemble the system of sewers we've built for them.

And in the UK, thanks to current forestry practices and the eradication of natural predators, the number of deer is at its highest for a thousand years, with some one-and-a-half million frolicking in the woodlands and suburban gardens (just ask my sister about her plants).

Even when we poison the lakes and pollute the rivers, the cyanobacteria (or blue-green algae as they are commonly known) come up smiling; eagerly exploiting the increased nitrogen levels that result when fertilisers applied to farmland are washed into the waters. 

Finally, it's worth giving a big shout to the cephalopods; for species of squid, cuttlefish, and octopus are also making the most of present conditions. Whilst not entirely sure why their numbers are rising, scientists think it's likely due to the fact that the oceans are warming - thanks to human activity - and because we're significantly depleting the numbers of those animals that usually prey on the above.

In addition, celaphopods are natural suvivors; highly intelligent and extremely adaptable creatures who have been around for approximately 480 million years (cf. the pitiful 200,000 years chalked up by modern humans).  

In brief: although some like to imagine an apocalyptic future in which the earth is devoid of all life apart from human beings and their parasites, there is evidence to suggest that things won't be so grim; that large scale and drastic changes to the environment can, in fact, give evolution a real kick up the arse, resulting in new and more resilient species (often as the result of hybridization).

Of course, there probably aren't going to be any charismatic megafauna outside of zoos and conservation areas, but the process of natural selection will almost certainly ensure the survival of life at some level and in some form. Indeed, to return to our friend the mosquito, a sub-species has been discovered living in the London Underground of all places; while you mind the gap and worry about saving the whale, she pierces your skin and drinks ...    


Notes 

Those interested in this topic might like to see the recently published book by Professor Chris D. Thomas; Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature is Thriving in an Age of Extinction, (Allen Lane, 2017). 

For a fascinating interview with Prof. Thomas on the Vox news site (Dec 15, 2017) click here.

Reflections on the Death of a Rhinoceros

Sudan the rhino (1973 - 2018) 

Sudan, the last male northern white rhinoceros, is dead [insert sad face emoji here].

The 45-year-old beast, who had lived almost his entire life in captivity, was euthanised by his keepers yesterday after suffering from a number of age-related complications.

Now there are just two females left alive; Najin and Fatu, both his offspring and which, like Sudan, live at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, under 24-hour armed guard in order to protect them from poachers. 

It's pretty much the end of the line, then, for this subspecies of rhino.

Having said that, there are ongoing attempts to bring them back from the very brink of extinction using the latest IVF techniques; i.e. harvesting eggs from Najin and Fatu and fertilizing them with supplies of Sudan's frozen semen. The resulting blastocysts would then be implanted in the wombs of female southern white rhinos.   

One might wonder, however, if there's any real point in the scientific resurrection of a species if the animals are simply going to be studied as specimens and displayed as living fossils ...?

I genuinely wish there were tens of thousands of these magnificent creatures still charging about in the wild. But, sadly, that's no longer a possibility in the world today. And so maybe the next best thing is to let them die with dignity and then rest in peace in the great void of non-being. 

For even if the rhino vanishes forever, the earth will keep on turning. For the rhino is, like man, but one expression of the incomprehensible, as Birkin would say. There will be further utterances and life will continue to evolve in magnificent new ways when they've gone - and when we've gone - just as it did after the death of the dinosaurs.

Perhaps the rhino, like the ichthyosaurus and the dodo, was one of the mistakes of creation - or, rather, let us say, an interesting but ultimately flawed experiment; lacking in the fourth dimensional perfection of the bluebell and the butterfly.

And so, to paraphrase the immortal words of Ogden Nash:

Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,

I'll hope for something less prepoceros.

See: D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey, and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987). Birkin discusses his thoughts on the evolution of life with Gerald in Chapter V and, later, with Ursula in Chapter XI. 

Tits and Beaks

Photo: Dennis van de Water

It is, I suppose, another sign of advancing middle-age when one starts to be more interested in tits and beaks than what the Americans crudely refer to as t and a.

Thus I was intrigued to hear that the British obsession with feeding birds seems to be causing a rapid evolution in the rostrums of certain species, including tits, as they physically adapt to the garden environment.      

In fact, researchers at Oxford who have been studying the great tit population in Wytham Woods for over 70 years, have found that the beaks of UK birds in comparison to their Continental cousins are up to 0.3 mm longer. This may not sound like a big deal, but it's actually an astonishing development and even such a tiny advantage can mean the difference between life and death.  

Further, in conjunction with colleagues in the Netherlands, they have also discovered that, due to natural selection, genes determining beak length are now significantly different in British tits; in other words, Dutch birds not only have shorter beaks, but different DNA sequences. 

Apparently, the British spend about £200 million each year feeding their feathered friends; that's twice as much as the rest of Europe. And they have been doing so for many years now. Thus, whilst researchers can't definitively say that bird feeders are responsible, it certainly seems reasonable to suggest that the longer beaks are a result of this interspecies generosity.

However, whilst it's interesting to note that the number of species of birds that now rely upon supplementary food supplied by householders has risen to around 130 (up from just 18 forty years ago), one does worry about dependency and what would happen if, for whatever reason, people decided to hang up less feeders and more anti-bird spikes in the trees - like those sons of bitches in Bristol worried about protecting their precious BMWs. 

Notes 

For further details, see 'British birds adapt their beaks to birdfeeders' (20 Oct 2017) on the Oxford University News and Events page: click here. Most of the factual information above was gleaned from this source. 

The actual study referred to - 'Recent natural selection causes adaptive evolution of an avian polygenic trait', by Mirte Bosse, Lewis G. Spurgin et al - was published in Science, Vol. 358, Issue 6361, (Oct 2017), pp. 365-68. 

The case of residents in Clifton - the affluent Bristol suburb - fixing spikes to trees in their neighbourhood in an attempt to prevent birds from perching and shitting on the expensive cars parked below, was widely reported in the press earlier this month. I refrained from commenting here on Torpedo the Ark, as I didn't want to be seen to be inciting vandalism in response to this grotesque act of selfish and spiteful stupidity. Click here to read a report in the local paper, the Bristol Post.   

Intelligent Atheists Contra Instinctive Religious Breeders

According to the latest research, religious worshippers are more instinctive but less intelligent than atheists. For whilst the faith of the former is rooted in innate, typically fixed patterns of behavioural response, the cleverness of the latter signifies an overcoming of such biological automatism and increased reliance upon the cerebral cortex and social learning.

This is not to say that atheists have a more complex neural system than believers - and it doesn't explain why they tend to be better-looking and make superior lovers - but it does suggest that they use their grey matter more.        

The theory put forward by Edward Dutton and Dimitri Van der Linden - the so-called Intelligence-Mismatch Association Model - attempts to explain why numerous studies over recent decades have consistently found a significant negative relation between intelligence and religiosity. It would make sense, say the authors, if faith is considered an evolved domain and intelligence the ability to transcend primitive instincts and to think in a rational manner that allows us to problem solve and freely develop our curiosity without falling to our knees and calling upon deities.  

However, although advantageous in many ways, evolution in no way ensures the survival of intelligence. Indeed, whereas smart individuals have successfully curtailed their fertility, peoples who still instinctively believe in a god have maintained high rates of reproduction. Thus, whilst atheists have plenty of ideas, true believers have lots of children.   

Partly, this is because the latter reject contraception on theo-superstitious grounds. But it's also because a people who still believe in a god ultimately still believe in themselves and in their right both to sacrifice and to breed. One might say they venerate their deities and express their will to power by exercising their loins, rather than their minds (and are often encouraged to do so as a religious duty).

This being the case, as a godless and childless Nietzschean one also has legitimate concerns for the future ...


See: Dutton, E. and Van der Linden, D.; 'Why is Intelligence Negatively Associated with Religiousness?', in Evolutionary Psychological Science (2017).

See also: Michael Blume; 'The Reproductive Advantage of Religiosity', a lecture given at the Explaining Religion Conference, Bristol University (2010): click here to read a published version.

Fish Out of Water (Notes on Evolution and Cruelty)

According to a report in the New Scientist, blenny fish - fed-up with the predatory behaviour of their aquatic neighbours - are abandoning life beneath the waves of the South Pacific Ocean and gradually relocating to dry land. It's 400 million years after others of their kind first made the move and kick-started an evolutionary process that eventually produced us. But still, better late than never and I wish 'em the best of British.

The case is interesting because scientists have never been entirely certain why fish first chose to exit the sea and crawl gasping onto terra firma. After studying several species of blenny, however, researchers at the University of New South Wales have concluded that it's most likely an attempt to avoid being eaten by bigger fish, such as flounders. This desire to escape is an understandably strong impetus.

Of course, it's not all sweetness and light up here on land and there are still dangers awaiting for the blennies as they shuffle around the rocks - such as bird attacks. But predation risk is significantly less, however, than it is underwater. In fact, once they pick up their piscine courage and make the full transition - developing stronger tail fins so as to be able to leap about more successfully - their chances of being eaten drop by about two-thirds (66%).

Further, moving onto land has additional benefits for blennies; holes in the rocks, for example, provide conveniently sheltered spaces for laying eggs. So it's really a move worth considering seriously if you're a small fish. In fact, one is surprised that it hasn't been tried more often and by more types of fish other than the estimated 30-odd families that have made the crossing between worlds. 

That said, Nietzsche reminds us in the Genealogy that it is never easy for any creature to make such a fundamental change. For fish, becoming land animals was as difficult, as painful, and as terrifying as it was for the animal man to become a creature capable of making promises; a creature restrained by a morality of custom and subject to an internalisation of cruelty; a creature made regular and predictable and weighed down by bad conscience; a creature, in short, made human, all too human.    

Like us, the blenny fish is the result of millions of years of evolution. But only man has shaped himself through thousands of years of self-torture; indeed, this is what we have had the longest practice doing and wherein our genius as a species lies.    


See:

Alice Klein, 'These fish are evolving right now to become land-dwellers', New Scientist (16 March 2017): click here to read.

Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), particularly the Second Essay. 

City All Over (Notes on Urban Wildlife)

Some creatures have always been happy living synanthropically alongside man and have long been residents of the city. Rats, pigeons, and cockroaches are three very obvious examples, drawn from three very different classes of animal. We may think of them as pests to be exterminated, but they think of us much more generously and not only survive but thrive in the urban environments we've constructed and gradually extended over the entire globe.     

Indeed, as our cities grow ever greater in size and areas of natural wilderness continue to shrink and disappear, more and more species are faced with the stark choice of either adapting to life within the concrete jungle, or face extinction. Some, obviously, aren't going to make it. But a surprising number of animals - large and small - are at least giving it a go and competing for food, space, and shelter alongside the more familiar magpies, foxes, squirrels, and stray cats.  

Unbelievably - but wonderfully - we can today find wild boar in the suburbs of Berlin, boa constrictors in Miami, baboons in Cape Town, big cats in Mumbai, and birds of prey in NYC. Even the Hollywood Hills are home to their very own mountain lion.      

What's amazing is the speed with which some creatures are getting the hang of things; learning to navigate the traffic or exploit the subway system; learning to communicate in new ways, thereby overcoming the problem of constant noise; learning to hunt by electric light; learning to exploit human waste as well as human kindness. It seems that, in some cases, we're not just witnessing radical adaptability and the acquirement of new transferable skills, but accelerated evolution; the creation of bolder, brighter, brand new urban species. 

All of which makes me happy and just a tiny bit hopeful for the future. I think everything that can be done to encourage and further this should be done; that we should welcome as many of our animal brethren in out of the cold as possible and allow them to enjoy the benefits of big city living.

On Fossils and Fundamentalists

Reconstruction of Tiktaalik rosae by Obsidian Soul (2012)

In 2006, a team of scientists announced their discovery of Tiktaalik rosae, a fossilized creature from 375 million years ago that soon became known as the fishapod, combining as it did features and characteristics of both water-living and land-dwelling animals.  

Tiktaalik was one of those rare and astonishing things: a fantastically well-preserved transitional species (or so-called missing link) and thus a highly significant find. Not surprisingly, therefore, Tiktaalik's discovery was greeted with great excitement within the scientific community and received extensive media coverage. 

In fact, the only people who weren't amazed and captivated by Tiktaalik were those individuals who, for crackpot religious reasons, reject not only the theory of evolution, but even the observable facts upon which the theory of evolution is based. Individuals who describe themselves as young earth creationists. 

Creationism, as the name implies, is the belief that the universe originates from an act of divine creation, as described in Genesis. This includes all life on earth. Whilst some creationists read this biblical creation narrative symbolically and vainly attempt to reconcile it with modern science, others, the so-called young earthers, prefer to take it literally and thus fervently deny evolution and insist that the world cannot be more than 10,000 years old - whatever the empirical evidence may be to the contrary.    

Young earth creationism is thus religious fundamentalism at its most unabashed and its most wilfully stupid. It's tempting to simply look away and pretend that such people are few in number and small in influence. Unfortunately, however, creationism - particularly in the United States - is a genuine concern and presents a very real threat to scientific education and innovation. The Institute for Creation Research, the Creation Research Society, and Answers in Genesis (which, in 2007, established the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky) have more money and more power than one might like to think.

And so, one is obliged to confront and to challenge such stupidity; not in the hope that one might persuade creationists themselves to examine the known facts and reconsider their views in the light of such, but in the hope that some of those who might be swayed by the pseudo-science of intelligent design and the reassuring rhetoric of the faithful (God loves you and you are made in his image and living in a divinely ordered universe with purpose and meaning, etc.) will dare to keep their minds open and always ask for evidence.

Torpedo the Ark means valuing intellectual integrity over and above religious ignorance. And it means learning to love your inner fish in preference to the Jesus fish ...         

Notes:

Those who are interested in reading clear and concise counterarguments to the sort of nonsense put forward by creationists might like to see John Rennie's article in the July, 2002 edition of Scientific American - click here. 

Alternatively, click here for a transcript of Brian Dunning's podcast 'How to Debate a Young Earth Creationist' (Skeptoid # 65, September 11, 2007).

 

Those who would like to know more about Tiktaalik rosae should visit the University of Chicago website dedicated to this extraordinary fossil: click here.